enter sky, stage left.

i asked the sky a question, silently
for yelling at the sky is just bad form
unless you are a fool, or demigod, or crazy
or your name is ahab or mel gibson.
how i went about it was less alarming, but, later
i realized, not better. i mimed a monk
with nothing to do, i lost any chance
of forcing the sky's hand, of panache, of brass.
my whole world is not a solarium. i trod too gently
or, rather, i trod at all--i want to glide
not jog through the cortex in clumsy portmanteau
add trip to clod and come away with trod
not a mode that is pleasing to children
nor future employers, nor the ear of god.
what i've done is whittled, reduced, and spun again
this question of myself until it remained, inert
in my head. the simplest explanation is right
usually, in matters demanding guilt be felt
but i’m not catholic; guilt is dead, long live the guilt
of my interior i must ask: un-simplify
the question, writ it long and run it on,
for my spirit talks in inverse proportion--
the purest question needs a response so big
i cannot see it. but perhaps i have it wrong.
maybe my mind has limits, wears this girdle
because it needs support; maybe horizons stretch
and the sky expands so it can hold all
the answer demands. then he took the cloak that
had fallen from him and struck the water with it.
'where now is the LORD, the god of elijah?'
he asked. when he struck the water, it divided
to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.
elisha did trod; but he trod upon manners and metaphor
and mel gibson--the things that cloak a fossil heart.
he threw the robe down, raised his arms up
and issued a challenge: surround me.
let me feel you under my feet, let my lungs breathe you
and know, too, that this air, this water, this plea
begins with alpha, not with me, not with why
and ends in omega, and in love, and the sky.